News and views about the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 and other legislation, schemes and policies impacting the Right to Education of India's Children.

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Saturday, March 8, 2014

3 years after RTE, 1.3L schools have no toilets

Manash Pratim Gohain, TNN | Sep 20, 2013, 06.29AM ISTNEW
DELHI: More than three years after the implementation of the RTE Act
and an expenditure of over Rs 46,282.11 crore on school infrastructure,
around 1.28 lakh out of 10,75,407 government elementary schools across
the country still don't have toilets and over 61,000 lack drinking
water facilities.

According to the District Information
System for Education 2011-12, Bihar has 18,169 schools without
lavatories, the highest among states. Andhra Pradesh follows with 18,092
such schools, while Chhattisgarh (14,697), Jammu & Kashmir
(12,341), Odisha (10,579) and Uttar Pradesh (12,104) are others with
more than 10,000 schools lacking the facility. Jharkhand has 8,404 such
schools and West Bengal 7,561.

Among schools without drinking water facility, Andhra Pradesh suffers
the worst with 11,461 such institutions. Maharashtra, Assam, J&K,
Bihar and Jharkhand have more than 3,000 such schools each.

This is inspite of Rs 28,171.6 crores (cumulative figure for all states
and UTs) being released during 2010-11 and 2011-12 for boosting
infrastructure in schools.

The RTE Act was passed by the
Parliament in 2009 and was notified as law on August 26 , 2009
guaranteeing free and compulsory education for children between six to
14 years of age. The law came into effect from April 1, 2010 across all
states barring J&K. As per the provisions of the law under the
"norms and standards" category, schools have to provide separate toilets
for boys and girls and safe and adequate drinking water facility for
all children.

Even the Elementary Education in India report's
Educational Development Index 2011-12 of National University of
Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) says that infrastructure
includes student-classroom ratio, classroom-teacher ratio, drinking
water facility, boys' and girls' toilets, ramps and kitchen-sheds.

If this is not bad enough, the NEUPA's report, based on DISE data, says
that many of the schools which have toilets and drinking water
facility, the infrastructure is as good as non-existent as they are
non-functional.

For example, 74.63% of schools in Andhra
Pradesh have separate boys' toilets, but only 21.57% are functional.
Same is the case with girls' toilets, with just 61.38 of them
functional.

Across the country, says the report, 81.14% schools
have boys' toilets of which only 65.87% are functional, and of the
72.16% schools which have girls' toilets, only 84.68% are functional.